Home Gym - Introduction

If you are think about starting to train alone at home you need to take certain things into account. One of the most important things to consider is safety. When you train with someone else they can spot for you but if you train on your own you need to make sure you get kit with spotter bars, like those on the Powertec Workbench Half Rack.

How Much Will I Have To Spend?

A simple bench and some weights are probably enough to get you started but lower cost equipment may not have spotter bars and you could be risking injury. Additionally, cheap kit will often not last the distance. That does not mean you need to break the bank to set up a useful home gym but you are probably looking at somewhere around $400-$500.

How Much Space Will It Need?

You can use a basement, a small garage or a spare room for your home gym, although obviously the more space you have the better. Avoid putting your gym on an upper floor though unless the floor is reinforced - dropping a heavily loaded barbell onto a thin floor could end up in disaster.

The Essential Equipment

You probably need at least a rack with spotter bars, a bench and a barbell, and of course some weights. A good rack will allow you to bench press, shoulder press and squat in safety and free weights give you the flexibility to use them in many different ways.

In terms of your weights, you need to consider whether to buy Olympic weights or standard weights. A lot of high quality racks will only take Olympic weights, so this might be the deciding factor. You can get dumbbells and all sorts of other equipment for Olympic weights so it is not a problem although it is usually a little more expensive than non-Olympic kit.

Depending upon where you are training you might also consider putting something on the floor. If for example you are training in a garage with a concrete floor you might consider putting some cheap underlay on the floor.

Getting More Kit

If you have the space and the money you might want to expand your gym with things like Smith machines, leg press machines, calf machines and similar, although you do not have to do this because with the essential equipment described above you can have perfectly decent workouts.

Important Considerations

Safety first! If you are training on your own make sure you get the correct equipment to allow you to train to failure without injuring yourself! Also make sure you know how to do the exercises correctly. For this reason raw beginners should visit a gym initially to learn how to exercise correctly, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Something like the Powertec Workbench Half Rack and some free weights is a good combination to get your home gym started with.

You need to be fairly self-motivated to train on your own at home - so it does present some challenges - but it is very convenient to be able to get to your gym in seconds and train whenever you like.